Bubble Street

Three tall Victorian houses (lilac, coral pink and mint green) crowd a street where soap bubbles drift past every window, some of them as wide as the bay fronts. A boy rides a green bicycle with a friend on the crossbar, a red tricycle waits on the pavement, a cream 1950s car noses out of a garage, and purple roots wind up over the gables. Daniel Merriam painted it in watercolour in 1994.

The colours are pale and the bubbles soften every edge they cross, so the transitions are gradual and the architecture gives you the only firm lines. Finished size 73.7 x 50.8cm.